STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 179 



"Notwithstanding these conclusions are so obvious, I have heard it 

 asserted that Monterey is destined to outstrip it. That Monterey can 

 never surpass San Francisco, I think the following view will clearly 

 establish; tirst, San Francisco has a safer and more commodious harbor 

 than Monterey; second, the waters of the bay afford an easy method of 

 communication, and a focile means of transportation between the town 

 and the hundred lateral valleys which surround the bay, and which are 

 destined soon to become the granaries and hives of plenty; third, it also 

 has a ready means of communication by water with the rich and large 

 valleys of "the San Joaquin, the Sacramento, and the American Fork, as 

 all of these rivers are tributary to the bay. This, it seems to me, allow- 

 ing all other things to be equal would give to San Francisco an insuper- 

 able advantage." 



*to^ 



In a subsequent issue of the Star, we find the following correction : 



" In my communication last week on the statistics of San Francisco, I 

 stated that there had been at least twenty houses built in the two months 

 of July and August. I find, on examination, I have unintentionally done 

 great injustice to the spirit of improvement and progress which pervades 

 the place, for instead of there having been at least twenty, there were 

 forty-eight buildings erected within the time spoken of above. In the 

 year previous to the first of April, eighteen hundred and forty-seven, there 

 were erected : shanties, twentj^-two; frame buildings, thirty-one ; adobe 

 buiklings, twenty-six. Total, seventy-nine. Since the first of April, and 

 up to the present time, there have been built, or in process of erection: 

 shanties, twenty; frame buildings, forty-seven ; adobe buildings, eleven. 

 Total, seventy-eight. This shows the astonishing increase within the 

 last five months of one hundred per cent." 



This is an exceedingly valuable item, to which we will presently refer. 

 We will make one more quotation from these interesting columns, and 

 then proceed to a brief glance of some of the contrasts of time and 

 change. On the eighth of JSTovember, eighteen hundred and fortj'-seven, 

 the Town Council enacted the following ordinance : 



" Be it further ordained, that any person killing or maiming the carrion 

 fowls or birds within the limits of this town, shall be fined one dollar for 

 each and every off'euce, upon conviction thereof." 



Another important item which we may make use of in the future. 



We have said that " it was contrast which defined the boundaries of 

 superiority and portrayed the character and quality of progress." We 

 have now seen from newspaper authority, and in the record of passing 

 events — there can be no bettei- — what San Francisco was eighteen years 

 ago. 



Some of the quotations we have made may have appeared absurd and 

 out of place. But are they really so? Take for example the most gro- 

 tesque specimen — the runaway and advertisement of caution against 

 Hetty C. Brown. Such an incident was certainly not calculated to pro- 

 mote the development of numerical progress in the Brown de])artment. 

 But you will readily agree Avitii us, that it worked no serious obstruction 

 to the San Francisco branch of this eminently prolific family. By turn- 

 ing to the Brown catalogue of Langley's last Directory of the bay city for 

 eighteen hundred and sixty-four and eighteen hundred and sixty-five, we 



